Brian's Brain

Two and a half weeks ago, I told you that I'd reluctantly disabled HDD spindown on my Netgear (formerly Infant) ReadyNAS X6, because the NAS refused to keep the drives asleep. I've been doing some experimentation over the holidays in an attempt to identify (and resolve) the root cause(s), and I thought a follow-up might be appropriate (particularly since at least one of my readers explicitly asked for it).

Disconnecting the Ethernet cable didn't, as I suspected, fix the problem; whatever kept waking up the ReadyNAS immediately after it went to sleep was internal to the NAS, not th...Read More

Back in late May, I used the PC graphics experience of a friend of mine to illustrate the 'penny wise, pound foolish' philosophies of some consumer electronics companies, who by their unwillingness to spend scant incremental cost upfront end up killing any hope of a profit (along with long-term consumer loyalty) by incurring subsequent, substantial technical support expenses. As of yesterday, I have another example to share with you, this one involving Microsoft's Xbox 360. Ironically, back in mid-March I praised the design of Microsoft's Wi-Fi adapter for the game console. The company's A/V cable configuration, on the other hand...

My neighbors Hartl...Read More

Late yesterday afternoon, Moo Shu and I stopped off at the nearby home of my friends the Lessers for a brief hello. Hartley mentioned that he was having trouble getting the Wi-Fi portions of his Apple Extreme 'N' router working, but I wasn't able to diagnose the problem right then and there; we'd only begun our daily 2.5+ mile trek to the mailbox and back, I wanted to make sure I got back home before dark, and as I'd just spent three hours cross-country skiing I thought the walk might take a bit longer than usual ;-) Instead, I asked Hartley to email me his WAN IP address and router password, and I'd remotely log in later that evening and see if I could discern anything amiss.

Hartley...Read More

As I mentioned yesterday, I canceled my Sacramento Bee newspaper subscription last Wednesday morning. Thursday's weather was pretty severe, so even if my account was still active, the paper probably wouldn't have arrived. Friday conversely dawned clear and sunny, so the absence of a Bee on my driveway assured me that the cancellation had been correctly processed...prematurely assured me, that is. A Bee showed up on Saturday morning. And even though I called customer service that same day and confirmed that I was no longer being charged (the customer service rep even said she was sending a cease-and-desist message to the local delivery person), editions also arrived on Sunday and today. Does anyone wonder why ne...Read More

Last Wednesday, I did something I'd long resisted. I canceled my Sacramento Bee newspaper subscription. I'll acknowledge upfront the irony and seeming hypocrisy of my actions, coming from a senior technical editor whose paycheck is predominantly still compensated by print advertising and who's long bemoaned degradation of the journalism profession (not to mention the fact that I'd been a Bee subscriber for 20 years)...therefore the 'long resisted' bit at the beginning of this paragraph. But, by the end of this writeup, I hope to persuade you that EDN's not necessarily subject to the same market dynamics, at least to the same degree, as many other currently-suffering print publications. ...Read More

...lead to Christmas Day multi-hour shoveling sessions...and thankfully, to day-after-Christmas sunshine.

The abode, not (yet) as buried as last year

Another view, including the new-to-me automobile (check out that snow cap!)

...Read More

Last weekend, after the conclusion of a lengthy internal-then-external beta process (in which I participated), Roku rolled out high-definition playback capabilities for its $99.99 Netflix Player:

The initial-boot 'splash screen' for the v1.5 firmware upgrade (specifically, build 901) indicates that access to services beyond Netflix are slated for 'early 2009'. Unfortunately, this isn't yet early 2009. But more on that in a minute...

My current 2.5 Mbps (actual, 3 Mbps spec'd maximum) AT&T DSL broadband service tier is unfortunately below the threshold needed for reliable HD streaming, so you'll need to peruse other users' feedba...Read More

Continuing the 'power-thrifty holiday presents' theme I began last Friday, let's first look more closely at the computers (and computer architecture-derived gear) I mentioned in this series' initial post. I know many people who leave their computers on all the time and don't even bother enabling the displays' low-power modes...the glow from my neighbors' system's monitor, for example, emanates from one room's window day and night.

Excuses I've heard for this power-wasting behaviour include:

1. It takes too long for the computer to turn on
2. Any power saved by having the computer off (or alternatively in standby) is more than counterbalanced by the surge of power needed to wake it up, and
3. Turning the computer on and off all the time prematurely li

The reader interest in last week's LED Christmas light-themed blog entry was...umm...unexpected. I mean...wow. I'm not complaining, mind you, quite the contrary. It just never fails to crack me up...I spend several hours carefully crafting an in-depth analysis of some topic or another, and I get...zilch (relatively speaking). Then I snap a few photos, add a bit of commentary and get...a blizzard of hits. Unpredictable impermanence, I guess.

Anyhoo...a notable percentage of the reader comments were, not surprisingly, focused on power consumption comparisons between LEDs and traditional incandescent bulbs. As such, with apologies to my cohort Margery Conner who does an ...Read More

It's been a busy day in PC microprocessor land, hasn't it?

My cover story on value-oriented x86 CPUs (Intel's single- and dual-core Atom, and Via's C7 and Nano) will be published for your perusal in three weeks (and a few hours). For purposes of this evening's writeup, I'll give you a brief preview to whet your appetite:

• Atom is an impressive microprocessor, particularly considering its price tag, but it's unfortunately mated

AMD, a company which (along with its competitors) I've criticized in the past for conducting intros that were heavy on hype and light on significance ("lots of sizzle, little steak", as the saying goes) notably shifted gears on Monday when it rolled out the Athlon X2 7750 Black Edition and Athlon X2 7550 dual-core CPUs. The company was so quiet that it didn't even generate a press release to commemorate the occasion; see for yourself. At first, I was baffled, because although the products' names imply an extension of the longstanding K8 microarchitecture, they're actually the company's first dual-core products derived from the ...Read More

Last week's OLED writeup reminded me that I hadn't yet crafted another long-planned post, on Qualcomm's competitive Interferometric Modulator (IMOD) display technology. I first heard about IMOD (which Qualcomm trademarks with the Mirasol marketing monicker) via a breakfast meeting with the company at the 2007 SIGGRAPH show. The MEMS-based concept, reminiscent of the structure that creates the iridescent colors of a butterfly wing:

is quite cool...although as you'll soon see, I'm somewhat skeptical of the prospects for Qualcomm's implementati...Read More

The latest in a series...

The first serious snowstorm of the season took its sweet time getting to the Sierras this year, but it packed a wallop when it finally decided to arrive:

Here's the view outside my side door, showing the last ~24 hours' worth of accumulation on the deck (since I last shoveled yesterday morning):

...Read More

If you'd like to try out the CHDK Canon digicam firmware add-on that I mentioned a few days ago for yourself but you don't want to take a chance on an Ebay-sourced used unit, Canon's PowerShot A460 (the same camera I have) is on sale right now for $79.99 at JR.com, with free shipping and no sales tax outside of New York State. See here for other cameras supported by CHDK's Autobuild facility.

This week's been another difficult one both on Wall Street (and its international equivalents) and in corporate boardrooms and development labs around the world. As such, I thought I'd do my part to end it on an up note. I hope you don't mind ;-)

Tuesday marked the 40^th anniversary of the first public demonstration of a computer mouse by researcher Doug Engelbart. And last Wednesday, leading mouse supplier Logitech announced a closely related achievement; the ...Read More